The Biggest Revelations From Seth Rogen's Memoir

Born in the Canadian city of Vancouver, Seth Rogen launched his comedy career when he was just a teenager. In fact, he told The Washington Post that he was still in his teens when he headed to Hollywood and landed a role as a series regular on beloved cult classic TV comedy "Freaks and Geeks." From there, small-but-memorable roles in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" led to a starring role in the comedy "Knocked Up," which became a surprise hit at the box office. Rogen ultimately proved to be a force to be reckoned with behind the camera, too, becoming a multi-hyphenate who wrote and produced his own projects, including breakout hits "Superbad," "Pineapple Express," "Neighbors" and his raunchy, R-rated foray into animation, "Sausage Party." Outside of showbiz, Rogen parlayed his stoner comedy king status into an actual marijuana business with his weed venture Houseplant. 

In May 2021, Rogen added another entry to his curriculum vitae with the publication of his memoir, Yearbook. "Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best," Rogen described his book on the publisher's website.

Rogen covers a lot of ground in Yearbook, so read on to discover the biggest revelations from Seth Rogen's memoir.

Seth Rogen tried his hand at the superhero genre with 2011's "The Green Hornet." While the film wasn't the hit he'd hoped for, it did yield one of the most outrageous anecdotes in his memoir. According to Rogen's Yearbook, the role of "Green Hornet" crime boss Benjamin Chudnofsky — which ultimately went to Christoph Waltz — had another contender: Nicolas Cage. 

While Cage has more than proven his onscreen villainous chops, the star ended up requesting a somewhat eccentric spin on the character. "I want to play a bald guy but have hair tattooed on my head and big prosthetic lips," Rogen recalled Cage telling him. Cage also saw the character as "a white Bahamian" who spoke in a thick Caribbean patois.

Rogen elaborated in an interview with Howard Stern, revealing Cage pitched the character as "a white Jamaican guy," and in a subsequent meeting performed a monologue as the character he'd envisioned. "A monologue, I should add, that is not in the script — nor did it have anything to do with the script," Rogen told Stern. "There is no indication that he had any idea what film we were trying to make ... other than that it was called 'The Green Hornet' and there was a villain in it."

Nicolas Cage was never hired for "The Green Hornet," yet the bizarre character he'd pitched apparently remained near and dear to him. About a year later, Rogen's "Pineapple Express" co-star James Franco appeared in the film "Spring Breakers," playing a drug-dealing wannabe rapper with cornrows. As Rogen recounted in Yearbook, years later, he had another meeting with Cage, who expressed his suspicions that Franco had ripped off his idea. "Did you ever tell him about that meeting we had? About the white Jamaican guy? Is that where he got the idea for the guy in 'Spring Breakers?' Did he steal it from me?" Rogen recalled Cage asking him. Rogen told Cage that wasn't the case, but as Rogen later told Howard Stern, "He very clearly didn't believe me, that was apparent."

Discussing Yearbook with GQ, Rogen explained why he decided to go public with his interactions with Cage. "I mean, [Cage] already doesn't like me, is the point. So he'll continue not to like me!" said Rogen.

Meanwhile, Cage himself subsequently responded. "I like Seth. He's a funny guy and clearly a good storyteller," Cage told Entertainment Weekly. "I wish him luck with his book."

Donald Trump was banned from Twitter following the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. If Seth Rogen had his way, however, the 45th POTUS would have been thrown off the social media platform far earlier. 

According to Rogen's account in his memoir, Yearbook, he became so incensed at how the then-president's incendiary tweets had been emboldening white supremacists, he called Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2018 to complain. "You're aware that, almost weekly, the president is in blatant violation of your terms of service with regard to abusive behavior, threats, and harassment, and that kinda tells everyone that you don't care about your own terms of service," Rogen told Dorsey, he wrote. "It seems like you're choosing what to enforce and not enforce, and right now you're not enforcing very much regarding white supremacy."

According to Rogen, Dorsey's response was not encouraging. "We're working on that," Dorsey replied. As Rogen wrote in his memoir, "The idea that it's up to the threatened classes to protect themselves from bigots rather than up to the bigots not to spread hatred and act on their terrible instincts is as stupid as, well, Trump." 

In his memoir, Yearbook, Seth Rogen writes of his who-knew friendship with Kanye West. According to Rogen's account, via E!, they first met when the rapper/failed presidential candidate was jogging past Rogen's home and spotted him. "You're a funny motherf**ker," West called out. 

Several weeks later, West turned up on Rogen's doorstep, introducing himself to Rogen's wife, Lauren Miller as "Kanye East." He then asked if Rogen wanted to come outside and play some basketball with him. Rogen, however, met West at the door and declined the invitation, explaining he was "too hungover" for anything sports-related.

Rogen also recalled another time when he and his wife joined West inside his van, where he gave the couple a private performance that lasted for more than two hours. "It was quite incredible," wrote Rogen, adding, "I don't have any insight into Kanye and his current state of being or mindset other than to say I really love his music and my interactions with him have been lovely." 

Speaking with Howard Stern about another of his Yearbook revelation, Seth Rogen recalled an incident from early in his relationship with future wife Lauren Miller, that he wouldn't exactly characterize as his finest moment. As he was walking her to her car one morning, he was suddenly struck by a burst of out-of-the-blue explosive diarrhea (he blames the digestive disaster on "salad" he'd eaten the night before at a bachelor party in Mexico).

Horrified at the catastrophe that had just taken place in his pants, Rogen soldiered on and bid her goodbye; Miller was apparently none the wiser. When he got back to the house, he assessed the damage. It wasn't pretty. "I'm gonna have to throw these underpants, pants, and at this point maybe my shoes and socks in the garbage," he wrote (via USA Today). 

Despite the defecation disaster, Rogen admitted he tried to look on the bright side. "I also thought, I love her, and I hope I get to spend the rest of my life with her and that one day I can tell her about this," he wrote, "because if anyone would appreciate this story, it's her."

Although Seth Rogan has been open about his avoidance of alcohol, the funnyman's affection for marijuana has never abated. In fact, he once declared in a video shared to Twitter, "If you know anything about me at all, I am going to assume it's that I really love weed." 

In his memoir, Yearbook, Rogen also reveals his fondness for psychedelic mushrooms. In the book, excerpted by USA Today, he described his first experience with psilocybin-packed fungi in Amsterdam at age 19. Expecting a groovy trip, Rogen instead found himself uncontrollably vomiting on the shoes of strangers, while his friend, Ben, had apparently passed out "face down" in an Amsterdam park. The shrooms also led them to come up with the idea of traveling to France that night, even though they had no idea what they would do or where they would stay when they got there.

"We did so many shrooms we didn't just freak out, or throw up on the street, or litter a whole picnic's worth of food in one of the most beautiful parks in Holland. We did so many shrooms we wound up in a completely different country," Rogen wrote.

Seth Rogen's comedy aspirations came early. According to one anecdote he shared in Yearbook (via the The Washington Post), Rogen was just 14 when he began performing standup comedy in his hometown of Vancouver. After one performance, Rogen was approached by a mohel, who offered to pay the teenage comedian to write some jokes he could use to entertain attendees at his circumcision ceremonies. 

Rogen proceeded to craft some jokes and delivered them to the mohel, who invited Rogen to hop into his Ferrari so he could go to an ATM to get him his cash. However, Rogen's friend was suspicious, according to a review of Yearbook in Forward. "He's gonna try to f** you!" Rogen's friend warned. "He's a f**king doctor!" Rogen replied, to which his friend countered, "Who SPECIFICALLY specializes in little kids' d**ks." Rogen ignored the warning, and ultimately got paid with no hanky-panky from the mohel.

According to the Post, Rogen recalled one of those jokes: "Now, just give me a moment as I oil up the chainsaw."

Seth Rogen devotes an entire chapter in his memoir, Yearbook, to pornography, and shared a shocking revelation that came about when he and wife Lauren Miller moved into a new house. As Rogen wrote in the book, the couple purchased a Los Angeles home that featured "a distinct water feature behind it." Years after moving in, Rogen found himself online, perusing some explicit, adult fare when (as chronicled by the Toronto Star) he came across a clip what he described as "four Russians" engaged in group sex "in our water feature."  

Learning that his new home had a particularly colorful history as a film set of sorts, however, was not the most disturbing discovery that Rogen's internet surfing brought about that day. "I did it. I looked at ALL the porn there is on the Internet," Rogen wrote. "It's the only way to explain the statistical improbability of me finding this clip."

Thankfully, Rogen took a circumspect view of his discovery, and reiterated this sentiment that expressed in the memoir during an appearance on the "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" podcast. "At the end of the day, ultimately, any house you've lived in... unless you built it, someone has f**ked in that house," he mused.

In Seth Rogen's memoir, Yearbook, he reveals how he auditioned for the role of Eminem's sidekick, Cheddar Bob, in the rapper's 2002 movie "8 Mile." According to Rogen, via The Wrap, the casting director told actors they wouldn't be reading with Eminem, instructing them to bring a friend to play his role, Rabbit. Rogen asked his "Freaks and Geeks" co-star Jason Segel to join him — discovering that Segel was also up for the same part.

"We asked our agents if our auditions could be scheduled one right after the other, so that one of us could audition for Cheddar, with the other reading the Rabbit part, and then we'd switch," Rogen wrote. "We had a sleepover at my apartment the night before the auditions so we could rehearse and then carpooled to the audition together."

The audition, however, went off the rails when they began "laughing hysterically" while reciting the "rappery" dialogue. "Auditioning is embarrassing in the best of times," Rogen wrote, "Add the fact that one of my best friends is watching me do it and that we're both reading for rappers from Detroit, which we could not have been less right for."

Seth Rogen and Beyoncé were co-stars in 2019's "The Lion King," but in his memoir, Yearbook, he wrote about an earlier attempt to meet Queen Bey that ended disastrously. According to Rogen, he was presenting at the 2011 Grammys, and saw the "Single Ladies" singer arm-in-arm with Gwyneth Paltrow, and decided he'd take the opportunity to say hi.

Rogen recalled what happened next in an interview with E! News' Daily Pop, when "instinct took over" and, with "too much confidence," he "charged" toward Beyoncé. "I was hit so hard by her security guard that I spilled a drink," Rogen said. "I was drinking a screwdriver, which is a bad drink, I deserve what I got. But I spilled it all over myself, and then a second later, someone came up to me and was like, 'Uh, you now have to present a Grammy.' And I was covered in screwdriver and I was humiliated and I didn't get to meet Beyoncé."

However, he learned an important lesson. "I should have gone up to her like you would the queen or that giant bird creature in 'Harry Potter' that you have to bow to before you can fly around on it," Rogen wrote in Yearbook, via E! News.

Seth Rogen has had a mixed bag of experiences when it comes to his dealings with music stars, ranging from being strong-armed by a member of Beyoncé's security detail to enjoying a private serenade courtesy of Kanye West. As he wrote in Yearbook, Rogen also had an unusual invitation from Sean "Diddy" Combs. According to Rogen, the erstwhile Puff Daddy took him by surprise when he asked him and wife Lauren Miller if they wanted to accompany him to soar over Sonoma, California in a hot air balloon. 

Because they didn't know Diddy all that well, the couple turned down the offer. "We both still talk about how insane and awkward it would have been, and we wish we could have experienced it," Rogen wrote of the missed opportunity, as reported by E!. "I can't decide if he'd have been really brazen or endearingly scared of the heights and fire."

At one point in his memoir, Seth Rogen writes of meeting with Tom Cruise about potentially working on a movie together. "I was driving up to his house. I had to pee so bad," Rogen recalled in an interview with Howard Stern, reported by Vanity Fair. 

"I was nervous to meet him anyway. I didn't want to meet him and be like, 'Hi, nice to meet you. Can I pee? Can I use your bathroom?'" While driving up Cruise's "long snaking driveway" he pulled over at what he assumed was a private spot, "and I peed in a Snapple bottle in my car. And then I sealed the bottle and left it there."

It wasn't until the meeting was complete and Rogen was driving away that he realized the place he had chosen to relieve himself wasn't as private as he'd assumed. "As I was leaving the meeting, I was snaking back down the driveway and, as I was passing the exact spot that I peed in, I noticed a red light in the woods. And there was a security camera literally pointed exactly at where I was peeing," he wrote.

In Yearbook, Seth Rogen also detailed his "absurd" meeting with Tom Cruise. At some point, he explained in an appearance on "The Howard Stern Show" (via Vanity Fair), Scientology entered the conversation. This led to a "very loaded moment" when Cruise offered to pitch his controversial religion to Rogen and director Judd Apatow, who was also part of the meeting. 

According to Rogen, Cruise told them, "Just give me like 20 minutes to really just tell you what it was about, you would say, 'No f**king way. No f**king way.'" Rogen and Apatow then looked at each other, with Rogen describing the internal monologue going on in his head at that moment. "Is he gonna bite? Am I gonna bite? Can we come out of this? Are we strong enough to have him do this to us and not be converted?" he said. "I'm generally a weak-willed, weak-minded person. I would assume on the grand scale of people, if [Scientology] got [Cruise], what chance do I have?"

In a sad moment for the Church of Scientology's celebrity recruitment efforts, Apatow changed the subject; Rogen had "dodged that bullet." 

Another weird anecdote Seth Rogen shares in his memoir, Yearbook, concerns a meeting he once had with acclaimed director Steven Spielberg, who invited fellow director George Lucas to sit in. As Rogen told GQ, he believed the "Star Wars" creator "will not be happy" with what he wrote. 

Rogen elaborated during an appearance on "The Howard Stern Show," revealing things instantly turned weird when he asked Lucas, "'How it was going.' 'Not great. 2012 is coming and the world is going to end," Rogen recalled Lucas telling him (while Lucas subsequently claimed "he was joking," Rogen admitted it didn't feel that way at the time). As the conversation continued, Rogen recounted, Lucas "implied he had a spaceship ... in preparation for this event in 2012, there was an implication that he had some sort of contingency plan to leave the planet." While the whole thing seemed far-fetched, Rogen had to admit that "if anyone, maybe, has a spaceship, it's a billionaire who's obsessed with space." 

At the end of the meeting, Rogen continued, "My partner, jokingly, was like, 'Can we get a seat on it?' He said, 'No,' which is what made me think it was not a joke."